Mschf, the company that created the blood-soaked trainers and large red boots, is no stranger to releasing contentious products. However, its most recent release with Louis Vuitton is not a divisive shoe: It’s a handbag that advances the mini-bag trend. It’s just a little bit larger than a crumb in size.
Mschf’s tiny bag, which goes by the name of the Microscopic Handbag, is composed of photopolymer resin and measures 657 by 222 by 700 micrometres. (For scale, that’s roughly the size of a dust particle.) The little bag is based on Louis Vuitton’s monogram OnTheGo purse, but according to Mschf, the French fashion company was not given permission, therefore this is not an official cooperation.
Sound like a silly investment? Maybe it helps to know that the bag is more of an art piece than a wearable accessory. The brand is releasing the item as a statement on luxury bags and the extremes people will go to wear them (whether that’s rocking huge or mini versions of them). “As a once-functional object like a handbag becomes smaller and smaller, its object status becomes steadily more abstracted until it is purely a brand signifier,” the brand said in a release. “Previous small leather handbags have still required a hand to carry them—they become dysfunctional, inconveniences to their wearer.”
You can own the tiny bag, though, should you wish. It will first be displayed in a sealed gel case and pre-mounted beneath a microscope on public view at the 8 Avenue Matignon gallery in Paris from June 20 to June 24. Then it will make its way into the Just Phriends sale—an upcoming auction from Pharrell Williams’s auction house, Joopiter, on June 19 to June 27. The starting bid is unknown just yet—but given it’s extremely gimmicky, its status as a collector’s item could make it valuable.